Who Keeps Trying to Hack Me?

Every day I get a number of e-mails trying to steal my personal information. Normally my SPAM filter catches them and doesn't let them get to my inbox. Some do make it though and they can be annoying. Of course none of them come out and say they are trying to steal your personal information. Most of them are offering you some type of gift you will never receive.

My favorite says it is from Marriott and due to a recent stay they want to send me 2 of their famous pillows. First off, I didn't know Marriott hotels has famous pillows worth wanting. The first giveaway that the mail is a fraud is that they spell Marriott with a single "T" at the end. Anyone who stays at the hotel frequently knows how to spell it. I imagine that the e-mail is meant to trap people that don't stay often but want a free gift.

A similar message comes from a hardware store telling me I have won some free power tool. I've seen the e-mail come from Harbor Freight, Home Depot, and Lowe's. There are similar telltales that let me know it is not really from the company they claim to be. Most of the time it is a poorly-created logo. Ultimately the return address is a dead giveaway too. It might be from marriotpillows@somecompany.com or powertools@somecompany.com. If Marriott or Home Depot is giving you something, the return e-mail will be from their domain, not some other company.

One day I received 4 or 5 solicitations to steal my personal information and it really annoyed me. I decided I wanted to see who kept trying to trick me and if all of the attempts came from the same people. I hovered my mouse cursor over the button to claim my various prizes and made a note of the domain name that the link would take me to. I never clicked the link, I just wanted to see where it would take me.

Then I pulled up a terminal window on my Mac and typed in: "whois somecompany.com" for all of the domain names. Each e-mail had a different one and so all of the e-mails seemed to be coming from different people. The utility whois does a domain-name lookup and tells you who actually owns the domain. As expected all information pointed back to the same company in Bellevue, Washington that acts as a domain name supplier and is not one of the major players. From that I concluded that all of the personal information thieves are related.

I wondered if I should pursue the matter any further but decided against it. I have a lot more important things I can do with my time. Perhaps when I retire I will spend time going after malicious hackers. Not right now though.

Special note: The "whois" command does not come standard on Windows. You will need to download it from the Microsoft website. I think that is a shame as everyone should be able to easily use it without having to do anything special. 

Are You Feeling Lucky?

Last week my wife and I got to see the movie "Wicked: For Good" at a free screening. We received 3 tickets and brought our youngest daughter who is in her 30's. While I enjoyed the Broadway play, I found the movie to appeal more towards a female audience and suffered through it. I know my wife and daughter loved it so I attended with them. They came out extolling the virtues of the film while all of the men in the audience came out shaking their heads saying, "What a weird movie." When I mentioned that to my wife, she said it appeals to women because the two primary characters experience what 90% of girls in high school do. That seemed like a good enough reason for me not to question her logic.

This morning I received another invitation to a free screening for the same movie. I do not plan to attend but I sent it out on our family text message stream should anyone else in the family be interested in seeing it for free. Perhaps my daughter-in-law wants to see it a second time or something.

This got me thinking about a study I once read regarding people that feel lucky. The study organizers asked a group of people to come in and answer a bunch of questions. The question book contained a message to study participants to show the message to the organizers and they would receive actual money. I think it amounted to something like $50 but I could be wrong. At the end of the study, the same people that claimed to be lucky happened to be the same ones that received money. Those that claimed to be unlucky missed out on the extra cash. The takeaway from the study is that sometimes people are not more nor less lucky, they are just more observant.

Being more observant is very important in today's society. While I received an invitation to a free screening, I also received an invitation to participate in a number of scams this morning. Your powers of observation will allow you to determine legitimate offers and bogus ones. 

I remember once getting a call from a guy telling me I had won a free Samsung tablet. He immediately blurted out that I really had won something and not to hang up thinking it might be a scam. I remembered entering the contest and after a bit of conversation provided the necessary details for them to send me the tablet. Fortunately I didn't have to provide much more than my physical address as asking for personal information such as my Social Security Number would have been a deal breaker.

There are lots off opportunities out there and it just takes a bit of careful research. You might get free movie tickets or even a free tablet. The trick is to ask the right questions and use your common sense. 

The Marriott Pillows Scam E-mail

I just checked my e-mail this morning and received an interesting message that is obviously a scam. The subject line says, "Welcome to Our Marriot Luxury Pillows Survey Zone." The first thing I noticed is that they spelled Marriott wrong as there are 2-T's at the end of the name, not 1. My curiosity drove me to figure out what the scam is.

I am not foolish enough to click on the link in the message and so I typed the subject of it into my usual Internet search engine and came across a nice Reddit post explaining the scam. Unfortunately it is a world-wide scam as people from the UK posted about it as well as fellow Americans. It seems you fill out the survey and then to get the pillows you have to pay a $7 or $8 shipping fee. Later they go back and try to charge you around $60. If you use a debit card, you have to rely on your bank to catch the fraud as credit card companies provide protection from such nefarious individuals.

I am a big fan of Marriott hotels having recently stayed at one during a trip to Orlando with 2 of my grand kids. I hate to see a good company like that associated with such a scam even though they can't control bad actors on the Internet. Hopefully others will see my post and not fall for such an obvious fraud. I also can't believe the thieves are only trying to get $60. That seems like a lot of work on their part for very little reward. I wonder if they think that is the threshold where people don't pursue recourse. Whatever their thoughts, don't click on the link and stay safe online.

Digital Privacy

This afternoon I checked my personal e-mail and received a message claiming to be from my company. While I work for Sony, my personal e-mail is through a domain that I own and it looks like another company. The message claimed to be from the admin account and said that I had 3 undelivered e-mails because they were SPAM. My e-mail account has a different filtering mechanism and I would never get an e-mail from the "admin". I had a link I could have clicked but I'm sure the results would have been nefarious. This is what is known as a Phishing attack. Paying attention helps ensure I don't inadvertently install a virus or malware on my computer. This has the potential of releasing all sorts of personal information to bad actors that can steal my identity, drain my bank account, and ruin my credit.

Your digital privacy is very important and you should do everything you can to protect it. Being aware of potential phishing attacks is only one step of many. I also limit the information I share with various websites where I have login accounts. I never provide my social security number nor do I provide my birthday. There are many websites that require a birthday simply to verify age. I use the same fictitious date for such occasions and avoid providing my real birthday if I can help it.

Another trick to maintaining your digital privacy is to limit your payment information. There are a lot of websites that want to make purchases as simple as possible and so they offer to store your credit card information. Then you just have to hit the "purchase" button and it automatically bills your credit card. I actually have my primary credit card memorized and re-enter the information every time I make a purchase from infrequent accounts. It only slows me down a few seconds but gives me piece of mind every time I receive an e-mail about websites being hacked and payment information stolen.

One final word of caution is to severely limit who has access to your bank account information. This includes debit cards. Once someone gets into your bank account, it is very difficult to get your money back once it is gone. By using credit cards for all payments, you have a level of protection that ensures you don't lose any money. You just need to notify your credit card company about fraudulent transactions and they will credit your account while they investigate. You may have to provide additional documentation but most credit card companies will catch the invalid purchases before you do.

Unfortunately there are some thieves out there and the ubiquity of the Internet makes it easy for a small number of bad guys to inflict harm on a large number of good ones. Taking your digital privacy seriously will help reduce damages. I just wish there was a sure-fire way to keep yourself 100% secure.